What Am I Doing?

By GrahamLewis · Jan 10, 2019 · ·
  1. I thought when I decided to commit to a year of Tao that I would be posting about it, about my discoveries and my thoughts on those discoveries. But I find that the more I study, the less I have to say. Partly because I realize how little I know, but more essentially because the more I learn the less there is to say. The living Tao is an elusive story about a way of being, not a set of abstract ideas.

    I know when I first discovered it, many years ago (before I consciously -- and I now believe wrongly -- put it aside as being among my outgrown adolescent affectations) I spent a few years trying to incorporate it into my life. I don’t think it was wasted time. I did learn -- or maybe unlearn -- a lot of the mystery behind the obvious. Even now a very good friend of mine from those days, who has since become a respected Yoga and Buddhist teacher, has told me I was one of his first teachers, that I pointed him some basic things.

    Yet I found I found myself unsatisfied and adrift, and spent quite a bit of time looking for the stories of others who had gone the same way I was going but found value in it. I found none. Every time I looked I found the opposite -- people who had been drifting but found meaning. I wanted to find something by someone who had gone from meaning to drifting. Until one day I realized that people who truly followed Tao rarely wrote about it. As Chuang Tzu puts it,

    “The man of Tao
    Remains unknown
    Perfect virtue
    Produces nothing
    ‘No-Self’
    Is ‘True Self’
    And the greatest man
    Is nobody.”


    Or as Lao Tsu put it, “Those who know do not talk/Those who talk do not know.” (Ch. 56)

    But these are not answers, of course. Lao Tsu and Chuang Tzu were not nobodies. They talked and wrote. Why then should I trust their words?

    Yet I know there is something there, beyond the words themselves, which are signposts to something else, something, as Lao Tsu says, is indefinable, which when found leaves the words behind as empty husks.

    So I’m looking for something that cannot be found and trying to find understanding where there can be none. In the undefined belief that something of value lies somewhere in there. (And something that has haunted me for years, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it). A search that can obviously be dangerous. As Chuang Tzu put it,

    “If you persist in trying
    To attain what is never attained
    (it is Tao’s gift)
    If you persist in making effort
    To obtain what effort cannot get;
    If you persist in reasoning
    About what cannot be understood,
    You will be destroyed
    By the very thing you seek.”

    Yikes, to put it mildly.

    Yet Chuang Tzu closes by adding these words of hope:

    “To know when to stop
    To know when you can get no further
    By your own action,
    This is the right beginning!”

    So this is what I am doing, seeking the beginning to something I don’t know I can find, and when I get there I will get nowhere but somewhere.

    Wish me luck (Zen maybe I will get it.)
    Cave Troll and Magus like this.

Comments

  1. Magus
    I feel like I'm reading a young Yoda's inner dialogue. Do Taoists learn a sort of selective apathy?
  2. paperbackwriter
    If you persist in reasoning
    About what cannot be understood,
    You will be destroyed
    By the very thing you seek.”

    You could apply this to Christian faith. This why a lot of atheists are turned off Christianity. because they need to objectify, reduce and take everything to a logical conclusion.
  3. paperbackwriter
    I think Christianity might appeal to those with an artistic bent. Tao and Buddhism too. Because things aren't so left brain logical and linear. You need to access that part of your brain which embraces doubt, ambiguity and imagination.
  4. paperbackwriter
    Bottom line. You need a sense of humour to follow any religion, faith or philosophy. Otherwise you start to take it and yourself too seriously, losing all perspective.
  5. GrahamLewis
    Magus, would you believe I have only the vaguest concept of Yoda? He's just not part of my weltanshauung.

    Paper, I am really impressed with the similarities between Taoism and Christian mysticism -- which is also what drew Thomas Merton to it. I'm not sure about the sense of humor part, but I agree not taking oneself seriously is an important component.
  6. Cave Troll
    It is interesting. Though one does not need to align with a specific belief to find
    ones center. Sure you can use teachings from them, but you don't have to follow
    them. The core philosophies are from the minds of great people who came to
    understand them, and allow the other's to utilize their teachings and interpret
    them in their own way. Philosophy should at it's core be adaptable to the person
    practicing it, not imposed by strict guidelines or rules. Like the people themselves
    they are not perfect.
    It might explain why Eastern Philosophy has been gaining traction here in the west,
    due to it's flexible fluid nature.

    All in all, use it to find yourself, not define you. :)
  7. GrahamLewis
    Good points, CT, I agree with you. One of the most disappointing parts of this quest so far is the way the original message has been appropriated or, in my opinion, lost in window dressing. I did some internet searching -- dangerous I know -- and one site that came up was run by a guy who was the 4th something of something in the something school of Taoism. A little more research found him in bankruptcy court and with more than one "business" running from his home site. So . . . .. I'm well aware of the tragedies that can befall those who blindly let someone else define meaning and purpose and value for them. E.g., Jonestown and the Moonies.

    And there is the simple fact that the original text tends to disparage formalizing the message -- "ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion" (ch 38) -- but there are several "schools" of Taoism with all sorts of rituals and pantheons of so-called enlightened immortals. I have a framed poster quoting the Japanese poet Basho, "I do not seek to follow the ways of the men of old, I seek the things they sought," and it seems to sum up my view in all this. I find great value, both logical and superlogical, in the Tao te Ching and in Chuang Tzu's commentaries and thoughts. But I'm treading cautiously.

    At the same time, I'm not sure I wholly agree that philosophies should be wholly adaptable to the person following them -- at some point that makes it all meaningless, to say simply that "things are the way I see them." It's a dangerous and narrow road, but sometimes one must take some things on faith, not logic and follow some teachings without or despite questions, in the belief and hope and expectation that things will become clear at some later point.

    As always IMHO.
      Cave Troll likes this.
  8. paperbackwriter
    As Christians we are warned about the danger of "relativism". This is the notion that truth is whatever we want it to be. So truth can be different for each person. Sounds like convenient idea for people who just want to make up their own rules for life to suit themselves.
  9. GrahamLewis
    At the same time, though, one must also avoid being drawn into accepting whatever one is told without question. Maybe that is easier for Protestants, since they have already rejected a lot of accrued dogma. Speaking as one descended from Quakers, Presbyterians and Lutherans
  10. paperbackwriter
    Oh I agree the Catholic Church deserves questioning. This is why I get in trouble on Catholic Internet forums. Dogmatic posters love playing a policeman role for the Church "sorry that rule will never change". I might be more Protestant in nature.
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